Opinion | The pro-Palestinian student protests in the US are primarily a moral theater

It does not seem so difficult to mock the American students who demonstrate for the freedom of Palestine “from the river to the sea.” Students at the most expensive and exclusive universities wear Palestinian clothes keffiyehsthey ‘liberate’ university buildings, and shout, as one of the demonstrators reported The New York Timesfor food and water as “humanitarian aid”.

Students from the University of Amsterdam have now also carried out such an occupation, following the American example.

All demonstrations are a form of theater. It is therefore inappropriate to mock young people who protest against murderous actions in Gaza, or anywhere else. Their moral commitment is not the problem. What is often lacking in the ‘anti-Zionism’ movement is coherence. Everything is connected to everything: police violence against black people, climate change, white supremacy, colonialism, transphobia, American imperialism, capitalism, and homophobia (‘Queers for Palestine‘).

Zionism

A student at Cornell University put it this way: “Climate justice is rooted in the same struggle against imperialism and capitalism and all that. The same applies to the genocide in Palestine.”

Zionism, once a collection of ideas about a state for the Jews, right, left, secular, and religious, now equates to colonialism, racism, and fascism. A good person must now be ‘anti-Zionist’. How could it be otherwise? It is not always clear to what extent ‘anti-Zionism’ also includes hatred of Jews. Rejection of Zionism or criticism of Israel is certainly not always anti-Semitic. That is to deny Israel the right to exist, and so is the position that all Jews are Zionists.

Intersectionality is the ugly jargon word for the ideology that connects every form of oppression. Most students now demonstrating for Palestine follow this line of thinking, not least because they learned it from their own professors, who are affiliated with the same universities that now need to be ‘liberated’.

It is not always clear to what extent ‘anti-Zionism’ also includes hatred of Jews

In a roiling sea of ​​identity politics, there is one identity that almost everyone who is more or less left-wing can agree on, especially in the US. Arnon Grunberg recently spoke in the Green Amsterdammer argues that anti-Jewish hatred, because of the Holocaust, is the “basic color” on “the wallpaper” of Western post-war identity. Anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and anti-imperialism are the basic colors of the progressive identity.

There is nothing wrong with that in itself. But it is misleading to view everything that happens in the world through that one lens. This also applies to the complicated politics in Israel-Palestine: Black Lives Matter – From the river to the sea.

This, I think, explains why the Gaza protests started at the most prominent universities in the US: Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Berkeley and Stanford. Most Americans, who have not received such a top education, are not really enthusiastic about intersectionality. Rather, it is a badge of the highly educated elites who also see themselves as the moral voice of the Western world.

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For people who can afford the most expensive universities (over 80,000 dollars per year), a certain feeling of guilt about excessive class differences may also play a role. It is easier to live with your privileges when class differences can be camouflaged behind a curtain of anti-racism and anti-colonialism.

But there is something else to this. Rebellions are often sparked by a sense that old privileges are evaporating. Populist demagogues, such as Donald Trump or Geert Wilders, capitalize on the fear that many white people have that immigrants and other people of color are doing better than they are. Something similar is also happening in elite institutions. Until recently, as a white man from a well-to-do background you could more or less count on getting a reasonably good job in higher jobs. That is certainly no longer guaranteed.

Perhaps immigration has increased competition for lower-level jobs, but so do leadership positions at universities, publishing, museums, journalism, and other jobs that require a college education. This is undoubtedly a positive development. Anyone who is in favor of inclusivity and diversity can only applaud this.

Smooth charlatans

But an ideology that demands not only tolerance and acceptance, but also active efforts toward “decolonization” and atonement for perceived racial privilege, is meeting resistance. A significant number of white men are attracted to far-right parties, or follow smooth charlatans who promise that men can be men again, and women must learn their place again. It is certain that racial prejudices also play a role in this.

But that same fear of disappearing privileges can also go in a completely different direction. Students at the best universities see it in their interest to prove that they are in good faith by committing themselves even more strongly than the ‘marginalized’ minorities to anti-racism, intersectionality, etc. At least that’s one way white men can try to maintain prominent positions.

That is why students at Columbia were at the forefront of the demonstrations to liberate Palestine. Whether this will actually help Palestinians lead dignified lives in their own democratically governed state is far from certain. But that may never have been the main intention. As is often the case with political movements in the US, “from the river to the sea” is mainly about America.

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